a. Technical Field
The instant disclosure relates generally to electrophysiology lab integration, and more particularly to user interfaces and devices therefore for robotic control of electrophysiology lab diagnostic and therapeutic equipment.
b. Background Art
It is known to provide an electrophysiology lab in a medical facility. Such a lab may have use of a wide variety of diagnostic and therapeutic equipment useful in rendering medical service to a patient, such as imaging systems (e.g., fluoroscopy, intracardiac echocardiography, etc.), an electro-anatomic visualization, mapping and navigation system, ablation energy sources (e.g., radio frequency (RF) ablation generator), a recording system (e.g., for ECG, cardiac signals, etc.), a cardiac stimulator and the like. In a typical configuration, as seen by reference to FIG. 1, a procedure room 10 (i.e., a sterile environment) may have an associated control area or room 12, which is commonly outfitted with one or more control stations 141, 142, . . . 14n that are operated by one or more control technicians. Each control station may include a respective display monitor, keyboard and mouse for use by the technician. Depending on the lab setup, the control station(s) may be across the room, or outside of the procedure room 10 completely, perhaps configured with a common window to allow the technician(s) to observe the procedure room through the window. These control station(s) allow access to and may be used to control the diagnostic and therapeutic equipment mentioned above.
In conventional practice, an electrophysiology (EP) physician 16 is scrubbed into a sterile procedure and typically manipulates one or more catheters (not shown) in a sterile drape covered body of the patient 18. The physician's sterile gloved hands are typically engaged with the catheter handle and shaft next to the patient and he or she is therefore unable to directly make changes himself to any of the EP systems. The procedure room 10 typically includes one or more monitors (e.g., an integrated multi-display monitor 20 is shown) arranged so that the physician 16 can see the monitor 20 on which is displayed various patient information being produced by the diagnostic and therapeutic equipment mentioned above. In FIG. 1, multiple applications, for example, an electro-anatomic mapping application (e.g., EnSite™ Velocity™) and an EP signal acquisition and recording application, direct a visual output to a respective display area of monitor 20. When changes to an application are needed, the physician 16 verbalizes such commands to the control technicians in the control area/room 12 who are working at the various control stations 14k, 142, . . . 14n. The multiple technicians at multiple control stations use multiple keyboard/mouse sets to control the multiple applications. The verbal commands between the physician and the technician occur throughout the procedure.
For example, the EP physician 16 can verbally communicate (i.e., to the control technician—a mapping system operator) the desired view of the map to be displayed, when to collect points, when to separate anatomic locations, and other details of creating and viewing an anatomic map. The EP physician 16 can also communicate which signal traces to show, the desired amplitude, when to drop a lesion marker, and when to record a segment, to name a few. Where the technician is in a separate room, communication can be facilitated using radio.
While some commands are straightforward, for example, “LAO View”, “record that” and “stop pacing”, other commands are not as easy to clearly communicate. For example, how much rotation of a model the command “rotate a little to the right” means can be different as between the physician and the technician. This type of command therefore involves a question of degree. Also, depending on the physician-technician relationship, other requests related to the mapping system views and setup can be misinterpreted. For example, a request to “rotate right” may mean to rotate the model right (i.e., rotate view left) when originating from one physician but can alternatively mean rotate view right (i.e., rotate model left) when coming from another physician. This type of command therefore involves physician-technician agreement as to convention. Furthermore, implementation of requests for event markers, segment recordings, lesion markers and the like can be delayed by the time it takes the technician to hear, understand and act on a physician's command. Ambient discussions and/or equipment noise in and around the EP lab can increase this delay.
Certain catheter procedures can be performed through the use of a remote catheter guidance system (RCGS), which employs robotically-controlled movement of the catheter. The robotic control can receive input command through a user interface that can include a joystick, mouse or the like. However, there is a need for an improved user interface to control an RCGS.
The foregoing discussion is intended only to illustrate the present field and should not be taken as a disavowal of claim scope.